Many of the professions and trades, for example physicians, certified public accountants, attorneys, chiropractors, architects, plumbers and electricians and the like, require individual practitioners to acquire and maintain a license. In the United States, license rules for such professions and trades are typically regulated by professional licensing organizations within the state. (The phrase "professional licensing organization" is used throughout to refer both to organizations for those in "professions" and those in "trades.") There may also be some federal regulation. In other countries, licensing agencies may be either regional or national. Typically, regulations require practitioners in the profession or trade to complete annual reports of continuing education study undertaken to retain their licenses. In the United States, these requirements may vary from state to state, but often state licensing agencies participate in a national organization and attempt to create uniform continuing educational requirements. Further, most state professional licensing organizations certify vendors that are permitted to offer continuing education to their members, and may even certify particular courses of study offered by the vendors.
Currently, many professional licensing organizations require the practitioner to maintain an individual record-keeping system for continuing education. At a minimum, the system must track the number of hours spent in the training session, the course title and the sponsoring vendor. Other requirements may be imposed, for example course categories, course numbers, sponsor numbers or course location. The responsibility for devising a record-keeping method frequently falls on the practitioner. Even where it does not, the practitioner is at least required to verify that the information collected concerning his or her continuing education is correct. The accumulated information must be reported to and/or verified with the professional licensing organization, frequently on an annual basis and in a paper-based format, such as an attachment to a license renewal form specified by the professional licensing organization.
As mentioned above, many professional licensing organizations also certify vendors which offer conforming education to the practitioners. The details of certification vary widely among professions and locales. Vendors may be required to submit information to the professional licensing organization concerning courses offered, instructors, and materials used for the courses. To maintain certification, vendors are also often required to submit information concerning course attendance to the professional licensing organization and/or to maintain this information to accommodate auditing by the professional licensing organization.
The purpose of tracking continuing education information is to ensure that educational requirements are met by each practitioner. Therefore, much of the professional licensing organization's efforts are concentrated upon receiving, recording, sorting, auditing and storing paper-based records of such information. In current systems, much of the information received is paper-based. Recording and sorting the information may include manual transcription to a computer-based environment. Auditing must include verification that the required hours are reported. Auditing might also include comparing a sample of the practitioner's data with the vendor's data, validating the existence of the course, the duration and evidence of attendance at a minimum.
Because the practitioners are geographically dispersed and frequently travel to undergo training, and because many professional licensing organizations are regional, vendors are also geographically scattered. An automated system for administrating, recording and reporting ("tracking") fulfillment of continuing education requirements is impractical without a way of accommodating this dispersion.
A disadvantage of the current systems for tracking continuing education information is the burden of creating, accumulating and storing numerous paper documents.
Another disadvantage of the current systems for tracking continuing education information is the error and inefficiency which can arise from manual entry of data either into a computer database or into some other record-keeping system.
Another disadvantage of the current systems for tracking continuing education information is the absence of mechanisms for verifying actual attendance.
A further disadvantage of the current systems for tracking continuing education information is the absence of mechanisms for comparing and identifying discrepancies in information submitted by attendees with information submitted by vendors taking attendance.
Yet another disadvantage of the current systems for tracking continuing education information is the error, inefficiency and burden which can arise from manual record-keeping by the practitioner.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system which automatically tracks continuing education and which does not rely on paper record-keeping.
There is a need for a system which automatically tracks continuing education, while minimizing error arising from manual entry of data.
There is a need for a system which tracks continuing education which will also authenticate the identity of the practitioner attending the course of study.
Further, there is a need for a system which automatically tracks continuing education which will transmit the data to the professional licensing organization in a form that facilitates its use.
There is also a need for a vendor data recording and storage mechanism capable of authenticating the practitioner's identity, of collecting data that meets the professional licensing organization's requirements and of transmitting the data to the professional licensing organization.
There is a need for a system to track continuing education, without placing a burden on the practitioner, while protecting the privacy of the practitioner.
There is a need for a system to track continuing education which prohibits tampering with recorded data.
There is also a need for a system to track continuing education which identifies exceptions to compliance with the professional licensing organization's education requirements.
There is a further need for a system to track continuing education which identifies exceptions to data consistency between practitioner's data and vendor's data.
There is also a need for a system to track continuing education which can maintain individualized real time data of geographically dispersed practitioners and vendors.
There is also a need for a system to track continuing education which can accumulate data on frequency of course attendance within licensing jurisdictions in order to plan future course offerings.